[tor-relays] the effect of bw auth location on relay selection

[Tom Ritter]

On 25 June 2015 at 05:55, nusenu <nusenu at openmailbox.org> wrote:
>> I run a relay in Japan on a gigabit connection, but nobody cares
>> too much, since (I assume) bwauths aren't anywhere near Japan and
>> do not get good speeds to it, they give it a low weight, and as a
>> result it doesn't see a lot of use.
>
> Lets say the BW auth is located on your LAN and gives you "1GBit/s"
> measurements, that would increase the likelihood that clients choose you
> but if your 1GBit/s uplink is limited to your city/country and the
> international uplink is eg. 100MBit/s than the measurement value alone
> wouldn't help much for non-JP partners, no?

It's not quite that straight forward, as the bwauths don't make a
direct connection to a relay, they build multiple tor circuits through
a relay.


> *) there is no bw auth in Asia in reality, current locations:
> +----------+-----------+---------------+---------+
> | nickname | city_name | region_name   | country |
> +----------+-----------+---------------+---------+
> | moria1   | Cambridge | Massachusetts | us      |
> | gabelmoo | Erlangen  | Bavaria       | de      |
> | longclaw | NULL      | NULL          | us      |
> | maatuska | NULL      | NULL          | se      |
> +----------+-----------+---------------+---------+

FWIW this may be misleading, as a bwauth does not need to be located
in the same place as a DirAuth.  maatuska's bwauth is in Belgium.

-tom